Widely used but illegal GPS jammers can cause problems with cell networks, …

During the GNSS Vulnerability 2012 event at the UK's National Physical Laboratory on Wednesday, experts discussed the threat posed by a growing number of GPS jamming and spoofing devices. The increasing popularity of the jammers is troubling, according to conference organizer Bob Cockshott, because even low-power GPS jammers pose a significant threat to cell phone systems, parts of the electrical grid, and the safety of drivers.

Since cell phone towers and some electrical grid systems use GPS signals for time-keeping, GPS jamming can throw them off and cause outages. "We're seeing a large number of low power devices which plug into power sockets in a car," Cockshott told Ars. "These devices take out the GPS tracker in the vehicle, but they also create a 'bubble' of interference, sometimes out to up to 100 yards. They're illegal, so their quality control is generally not good."

There has also been an emerging threat from more powerful GPS "spoofing" systems, according to Cockshott, who is also the director of Position, Navigation and Timing technology for the UK's ICT Knowledge Transfer Network. GPS spoofing attacks can provide both inaccurate location and time information, potentially creating much larger problems than a dropped call. "There have been incidents where trucks carrying high value goods have been hijacked," he said, "where GPS and cell phones have been blocked."

While such incidents have been rare, Cockshott said, these more high-powered jamming systems cause the greatest concern. The equipment on the systems have power equivalent to that aboard GPS satellites, he said, "but they're not 10,000 miles away—they're a mile away." Use of these sorts of attacks by criminals or terrorists, especially in bad weather, could lead to the grounding of ships in constrained channels like the Strait of Dover, or cause problems with GPS-based air traffic control.

One of the presenters at the conference, University of Texas assistant professor Todd Humphreys, presented findings on the impact of spoofing and jamming on cell phone systems. Humphries, who claims his lab possesses the most powerful civilian-owned GPS spoofer, said that in US tests, his research team succeeded in interfering with timing devices used in cellular network towers, breaking down synchronization between cells and preventing calls from being handed off from one cellular station to another. "So far, no credible high profile attack has been recorded," Humphreys said, "but we are seeing evidence of basic spoofing, likely carried out by rogue individuals or small groups." It's a major technological leap from basic spoofing to more technically advanced systems, but "all it takes is someone to put one together and publish it online and we have a major problem."

Small short-range jammers have created isolated problems in the US. In late 2009, a single truck using a GPS jammer caused headaches for technicians at Newark Liberty International Airport as it interfered with a navigation aid every time the truck passed on the New Jersey Turnpike. Truck drivers and other drivers who want to conceal their movements from tracking devices sometimes use basic GPS jammers embedded in their vehicles. Trucking companies use GPS systems to monitor the location of their trucks and cargo, and to keep tabs on their drivers' compliance with company rules and federal regulations. Auto rental companies use GPS in the US to track whether customers violate the terms of a rental contract by speeding or leaving a geographic area. GPS is also being used by auto insurance companies for "pay as you go" policies that offer reduced rates for drivers, metering their bill based on how far and when they drive, as well as other factors.

To get a sense of the extent of the use of these jammers and the reliability of GPS signals, the UK's National Physical Laboratory is taking part in a research project called SENTINEL, along with a coalition of other organizations and companies led by navigation equipment manufacturer Chronos Technology. So far, the project has installed 20 sensors at roadside locations throughout the UK to detect GPS jamming "incidents." Over the last six months, one sensor alone recorded over 60 incidents of GPS jamming. Another GPS jamming "probe" provided results that actually resulted in law enforcement retrieving a jamming device based on the regularity of its use.

Pish-posh! The cats out of the bag. Futzing with timing signals on cell towers makes your phone calls travel faster than the speed of light. I can't believe Ars is trying to cover this up! Hey, you let one of the writers from Wired into the building, didn't you? For shame!

He's an FCC licensed radio tech and uses this inside a repair shop. But if he can get this from the Internet so can anybody else. He also has a 1W handheld laser that can cut through stuff (not talking black paper or baloons). Also shipped from China for $200 or so.

Is the solution to create commonly available specially designed jammers that protect privacy? Why do people buy them? Perhaps if we had an idea of motive a legal solution could be developed that didn't break other systems.

This is so loosely connected to terrorism that it comes off as sensationalist. Get real.

Iran says they captured the Northrop Grumman RQ-170 Sentinel drone by spoofing GPS signals and guiding it to a landing. (Northrop says it was a techincal malfunction.) If it is possible, which the article says, I don't think it would be a stretch to trick a passenger plane at night into flying into a mountain or 1/2 a mile short of the runway.

The drone might have been programmed to perform a soft landing in case of a fault, such as an engine failure for example. That's probably what happened. Or it wasn't programmed as such. It lost the engine and still had electrical power from batteries. It continued to maintain the correct flight attitude. That would place it on a pretty nice glideslope for a landing. It's all sand out there so it probably just landed on sand on its belly.

"There have been incidents where trucks carrying high value goods have been hijacked," he said, "where GPS and cell phones have been blocked."

I'd love to get more details on this.

This can be lumped in with the mention of 'terrorists'. I'm surprised they didn't come up with a scenario where child molesters use these jammers to prevent children from calling for help using the cell phone their parents gave them.

My worry would be a little closer to home. With reguard to the cell jammers, many home alarm systems use cell phone technology for the system to be monitored. Could a burglar defeat the monitoring of my home alarm by using one of these?

"There have been incidents where trucks carrying high value goods have been hijacked," he said, "where GPS and cell phones have been blocked."

I'd love to get more details on this.

This can be lumped in with the mention of 'terrorists'. I'm surprised they didn't come up with a scenario where child molesters use these jammers to prevent children from calling for help using the cell phone their parents gave them.

You sir, have hit the nail on the head. Maybe first lets say "terrorists" then later, think of the children! I mean , what? It makes sense they have the potential to be abused, as with ANYTHING. Except for the trucks with hijacked goods and cell phones being blocked thing, what truckers don't use CB radio anymore?

All the military GPS systems I have worked with fall back to C/A code when P(Y) code isn't available.

Quote:

The drone might have been programmed to perform a soft landing in case of a fault, such as an engine failure for example. That's probably what happened. Or it wasn't programmed as such. It lost the engine and still had electrical power from batteries. It continued to maintain the correct flight attitude. That would place it on a pretty nice glideslope for a landing. It's all sand out there so it probably just landed on sand on its belly.

The drone was programmed to autonomously return "home" if it lost command/control communications. This has been confirmed. The Iranians claim they spoofed the GPS signal to make the drone think home was somewhere else. That's not a ridiculous claim given the state of commercial GPS spoofing devices.

Anyways, why don't they put effort instead into letting people actually be able to turn off being tracked 24/7 and have that data sold and accessible to other people? There is that whole debacle about OnStar and them updating in their TOS (A ridiculous statement in itself as these people are no longer wanting to use their "service") that even if you cancel your OnStar subscription they are still going to track you and sell all your data to 3rd parties, how you use your car, where you go etc.

Until effective good will is established to enforce compliance and stop corporations and government abuse of these technologies, they deserve it.

Well, they are dead useful for timing. You get access to multiple atomic clocks, nearly anywhere in the world, so long as you can provide battery power.

Depending on what kind of Real Time Clock circuit/ic you have, they are also far cheaper. With an RTC you have to worry about adjusting for temperature, crystal oscillation changes, etc, and adjusting for all of these factors become expensive rapidly. It's not that big a deal to lose a second daily in some applications, but in others it most assuredly is not. And then you have to calibrate the RTC to start with, give it an accurate initial timing, etc.

GPS just works, and the modules are $60 when a hobbyist purchases a single unit with antenna.

Ok, so I read this article and all the comments, and I've yet to see any rational reason presented as to WHY someone would be motivated to jam GPS... what exactly is the point, there? If you don't want to be tracked, you can turn the GPS module off on your phone, you don't have to buy a jammer for it. Besides, if you're that paranoid about your smartphone tattling on you, they still make dumbphones you can buy that don't have that stuff inside of them...

I don't see the problem here. It's basically real life tracking cookie blocking. The solution is to remove demand by allowing opting out of tracking. People should not be penalized for not giving demographic data away.

Having anti-theft devices set to automatically go off with their last known location if they detect an insanely strong (jamming) signal, and cell phones that set off alarms/fire off a distress signal when jammed might help solve this issue.

Ok, so I read this article and all the comments, and I've yet to see any rational reason presented as to WHY someone would be motivated to jam GPS... what exactly is the point, there? If you don't want to be tracked, you can turn the GPS module off on your phone, you don't have to buy a jammer for it. Besides, if you're that paranoid about your smartphone tattling on you, they still make dumbphones you can buy that don't have that stuff inside of them...

I'm not sure what counts as a "rational" reason. But if you are in a rental car and aren't allowed to take it out of state and want to go out of state a jammer would be useful. If you are a truck driver whose vehicle is tracked by gps and you don't like that, a jammer would be useful.

I'm not claiming that these are *good* reasons. But they are rational.

Ok, so I read this article and all the comments, and I've yet to see any rational reason presented as to WHY someone would be motivated to jam GPS... what exactly is the point, there? If you don't want to be tracked, you can turn the GPS module off on your phone, you don't have to buy a jammer for it. Besides, if you're that paranoid about your smartphone tattling on you, they still make dumbphones you can buy that don't have that stuff inside of them...

Turning off the GPS module just means you no longer have an app to check GPS. It generally doesn't deactivate the hardware - or the ability for the cellphone company (and thus the government) to access the information. Even if it did, it wouldn't matter since they can track you from the cell towers. The only (practical) way to turn off tracking on your cellphone is to pull the battery.

However, this isn't what people use GPS jammers for. They use them for vehicle GPS. As the article noted, there are numerous companies that want to track the movements of their vehicles. If you don't want your movements tracked when you rent a car, you can't deactivate the hardware doing so. However, you can block the signals it needs for such tracking.

GPS signals can be "jammed" by things like the electromagnetic shadow of tall buildings, bridges, and oh yeah tree cover.

Please rewrite this headline to "GPS jammers and spoofers are basic facts of life, say interns with the slightest technical knowledge." Or consider renaming your site to "The Daily Mail" or "The New York Post."

Problem is, there's too many people worried about what their own government spying on them that they will keep using these.

...You know GPS is a one way signal, right?

If people want to block critical communications, they could at least have the decency to narrowly target the ones that actually matter (cell frequencies, which report the GPS coords).

I'm not advocating the blockers as I would hate to have my user experience hurt by someone wanting to circumvent something they already agreed to i.e. trucker or rental car user, but what if the GPS unit in the vehicle just stores location snapshots every 30 seconds or something which is later uploaded directly to a computer, or if a cell signal is not available stores the locations then reports when a signal is available? The only way to get around these would be to block cell and GPS signals.

Ok, so I read this article and all the comments, and I've yet to see any rational reason presented as to WHY someone would be motivated to jam GPS... what exactly is the point, there? If you don't want to be tracked, you can turn the GPS module off on your phone, you don't have to buy a jammer for it. Besides, if you're that paranoid about your smartphone tattling on you, they still make dumbphones you can buy that don't have that stuff inside of them...

Turning off the GPS module just means you no longer have an app to check GPS. It generally doesn't deactivate the hardware - or the ability for the cellphone company (and thus the government) to access the information. Even if it did, it wouldn't matter since they can track you from the cell towers. The only (practical) way to turn off tracking on your cellphone is to pull the battery.

However, this isn't what people use GPS jammers for. They use them for vehicle GPS. As the article noted, there are numerous companies that want to track the movements of their vehicles. If you don't want your movements tracked when you rent a car, you can't deactivate the hardware doing so. However, you can block the signals it needs for such tracking.

Assuming OnStar/LoJack systems use GPS also, it would be mighty handy to disable GPS as you're stealing a car, and not have to worry about disabling those security features until you get it to the chop shop or resale point.

All the military GPS systems I have worked with fall back to C/A code when P(Y) code isn't available.

Quote:

The drone might have been programmed to perform a soft landing in case of a fault, such as an engine failure for example. That's probably what happened. Or it wasn't programmed as such. It lost the engine and still had electrical power from batteries. It continued to maintain the correct flight attitude. That would place it on a pretty nice glideslope for a landing. It's all sand out there so it probably just landed on sand on its belly.

The drone was programmed to autonomously return "home" if it lost command/control communications. This has been confirmed. The Iranians claim they spoofed the GPS signal to make the drone think home was somewhere else. That's not a ridiculous claim given the state of commercial GPS spoofing devices.

I know all that.

I don't think they hijacked the drone for two reasons. First, there was damage to the underbody consistent with a wheels up belly landing. Second, Iranians aren't sophisticated enough to pull something like this. They think they are and they want the world to believe that very badly, but they aren't. Yet.

Problem is, there's too many people worried about what their own government spying on them that they will keep using these.

...You know GPS is a one way signal, right?

If people want to block critical communications, they could at least have the decency to narrowly target the ones that actually matter (cell frequencies, which report the GPS coords).

I'm not advocating the blockers as I would hate to have my user experience hurt by someone wanting to circumvent something they already agreed to i.e. trucker or rental car user, but what if the GPS unit in the vehicle just stores location snapshots every 30 seconds or something which is later uploaded directly to a computer, or if a cell signal is not available stores the locations then reports when a signal is available? The only way to get around these would be to block cell and GPS signals.

A Faraday cage would be best for this, I think, rather than ruining everyone else's day (and ironically your own, should someone running a jammer happen to get in a wreck and be unable to use E911 services)

Ok, so I read this article and all the comments, and I've yet to see any rational reason presented as to WHY someone would be motivated to jam GPS... what exactly is the point, there? If you don't want to be tracked, you can turn the GPS module off on your phone, you don't have to buy a jammer for it. Besides, if you're that paranoid about your smartphone tattling on you, they still make dumbphones you can buy that don't have that stuff inside of them...

However, this isn't what people use GPS jammers for. They use them for vehicle GPS. As the article noted, there are numerous companies that want to track the movements of their vehicles. If you don't want your movements tracked when you rent a car, you can't deactivate the hardware doing so. However, you can block the signals it needs for such tracking.

Assuming OnStar/LoJack systems use GPS also, it would be mighty handy to disable GPS as you're stealing a car, and not have to worry about disabling those security features until you get it to the chop shop or resale point.

Until OBD-4 comes out, and the VIN is compared to a list of stolen cars every time the car needs emission testing or an investigation into the check engine light. And since the car computer literally runs the engine, it would be pretty near impossible to change the diagnostic unit successfully, especially if they built it that way.